28. Work-Life Balance and your salon business

Welcome, and today we’re talking all about work life balance. As far as work life balance is concerned though I think I’ve got three strategies that could really serve you well. I have a problem with the expression work life balance; I think it puts pressure on us as human beings that we should be spending fifty percent of our energy and effort on our businesses and the other fifty percent outside having some kind of other life. I think that where you set your percentage is entirely up to you, stop beating yourself up, stop trying to move to this fifty-fifty Utopian world. Firstly, you need to know what’s needed. This goes back to your goal setting. You will never achieve work life balance where ever you’ve decided to split unless you are crystal clear about what it is that you’re trying to achieve in the areas of your life. Once you know what’s needed it’s also much easier to figure out what’s not needed. Where are you willing to spend your time, your effort and your energy? Where you set those percentages is entirely up to you, but then what I want you to do is revisit your goals. Somebody much cleverer than me once said you can have it all, you can’t have it all right now. Secondly you’ve got to plan, and plan to death and be ruthless with your planning. Once I take on a new Salon for mentoring we go through a goal setting exercise similar to what we’ve discussed in item one. Next I give them two weeks after we’ve done the goal setting, I pick up their journal and I should be able to see what goals that person has for themselves. They have these ambitious goals, they really want to achieve at home and in their business, and when I open their journals I see a to do list of things that have just come along that day or the day before. You can’t plan that way, once you’re really clear about your goal setting, I want you to block out time on a weekly basis, get really disciplined with your planning so that you can start moving towards those goals. But also it means that you are going to get really good at saying no. I do all my planning on a Sunday evening, it takes me about an hour to revisit my goals, allocate my time and make sure that everything is as it should be for the week coming up. If anybody calls me with anything during the week unless it’s a dire emergency or a golden opportunity to move me much closer to a goal much quicker, I’m afraid it’s a no and you need to be that ruthless as well if you’re ever going to achieve that balance. Lastly you play the long game. Just because you’ve set those percentages for your time, effort and energy does not mean that you have to spend it like that every week. For example, when I get at the end of my three-year plan, I should have allocated the right percentages in the right direction. So as long as you’re playing the long game, as long as you’re achieving that balance over time, it’s okay for one area of your life to dominate in the short term. I hope that’s been useful to you, if it has don’t forget to subscribe. I’m putting a video like this and a podcast like this out every single Monday, I would hate you to miss out on the content that I’m sharing. Take care I’ll see you soon.